


The Birth of Eris

by haechansheaven



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, End of the World, Established Relationship, M/M, Na Jaemin-centric, Non-Linear Narrative, Outer Space, Space Flight, Stasis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25864291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haechansheaven/pseuds/haechansheaven
Summary: They are the perfect distance away from the sun. Reaching out, Jaemin is still burnt, anyways.Floating through space, endlessly, with only a direction and no destination. The world around them has ended and this is really the only way to find the future.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Na Jaemin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17
Collections: nahyuck fic fest!





	The Birth of Eris

**Author's Note:**

> nhff #0128
> 
>  **additional, expanded tags** : Death mention (NO character death), End of the world (non-descriptive), Religious references, Refuting religion

_And, perhaps, you look to the_

_left_

_a little farther, now,_

_and you can see the future,_

_swaddled in atoms and molecules and stars_

_that have no name._

**Mercury**

_At the edges of the earth, Jaemin seeks the last pieces of comfort that his fingers can reach._

Everything is sudden. There’s something to be said for existing at the edges of the universe, your hand held by the man you love. The peace that they held onto in the faded shadows of what Earth was is gone now, replaced by stardust and endless horizon. Jaemin doesn’t know what waits for them, not that he actually knows.

This is a dream, and they’re headed for the far reaches of space for a place that will become their new home. The star in the sky will no longer be the same, and Jaemin wonders if he will feel the same helplessness under the new moon. Perhaps there will be more than one. Perhaps he will be able to wish upon more than one shooting star.

Even in stasis, frozen in time, Jaemin knows that Donghyuck is beside him. The heat he emanates is still enough to seep through gel and metal and electricity. Jaemin doesn’t need the sun when Donghyuck is beside him.

In his dreams, they hold hands and watch as the world around them burns. Nothing about this dream is pleasant, but he can’t call it a nightmare for as long as Donghyuck stays beside him. This is their destiny, their fate, to leave behind a world falling apart and call a new place their home. It’s located somewhere far in the corner of the universe and Jaemin cannot wait to open his eyes and see what it has to offer.

Even if it’s barren and falling to pieces and a trick, Jaemin won’t care as long as Donghyuck is there.

They met by chance, even if they weren’t supposed to. In transit, between safe-zones, Donghyuck’s hand held firmly in his mother’s. Jaemin had stared at him from behind his father’s back, jealous of all of his siblings and the way his mother held onto him with the delicate love of a mother. Regardless of how sharp her tone was, her gaze was soft.

Jaemin’s parents stopped looking at him like that years ago. If he closed his eyes as child, he could sometimes remember how much they loved him. They moved, though, because they loved him and wanted a future for him. Jaemin just wished they could’ve shown it other ways. Donghyuck became a proxy of love, until he wasn’t anymore, and Jaemin could see him as _Donghyuck_ , not a source of the love he so desperately craved.

In the unfamiliar town they had been deposited in, Donghyuck became a transient sort of home, always on the move beside Jaemin. Physical locations lost their meaning with Donghyuck around.

Childhood is a fuzzy memory that Jaemin can’t really remember. The thing—the person—that sticks out the most is Donghyuck. That’s why they’re here, floating endlessly through space. The station calls it their new home, but Jaemin doesn’t think much of it. As long as Donghyuck is beside him, tangible luxuries like that have no meaning.

Pressing his palm flat against the pod, he hesitates, if only for a moment. Donghyuck, as always, is alert to Jaemin and his intricacies.

“I’m excited,” Donghyuck says, “for another journey with you.”

Right, Jaemin thinks. This is just another trip through some sort of space over some amount of time with Donghyuck by his side. Closing his eyes for a couple hundred or thousand years doesn’t sound so bad when he thinks of it that way.

**Venus**

_One day he wakes up, and everything is the same, just shifted half a centimeter to the left._

There’s still too much sunlight, even under the shade of the tree. A hand, warm, rests in his, and Jaemin wonders if he’s dreaming. He should want to let go. The heat of the summer is overwhelming, overbearing, just too much. His palm is sweaty and everything feels a bit constricting until a breeze rolls through the yard and the reprieve is enough to keep him seated.

Donghyuck’s eyes, impossibly dark, even in the sunlight, stare at him with a sense of wonder that Jaemin doesn’t think really works. He’ll take it, anyways.

Another breeze rolls through and Donghyuck presses his lips against Jaemin’s. It’s a silent sort of greeting. A _hello_ that needs nothing else. Jaemin will fester and breathe and live in this heat, this sunlight, for as long as Donghyuck wants him to.

As a child, Jaemin cries a lot. He’s six, and there’s a scrape on his knee. At first he stares at it in shock, fingers pressing against the raw skin until he feels it _burn_. He’s never felt anything like this for as long as he can remember, which isn’t all that long, so he knows that it isn’t _supposed_ to feel that way. Tears are traveling down his face before he can recognize what’s going on.

“You don’t cry anymore,” his mother had said in pride. “You’re so good, Jaemin.”

Instead of running to his mother or father, Jaemin sits on the warm, warm concrete and curls into a ball. Children around him whisper, call him weird, scary, abnormal, a _freak_. Jaemin doesn’t care about any of that, though. He just doesn’t want to disappoint his mother.

At home that night, with bright eyes, he places his hand in his mother’s, ignoring the stinging on his knee. There will be a scar there for the rest of his life as a sort of reminder of the day that Jaemin learned to stand on his own two feet for someone else.

Jaemin does not know this, but trips through the universe are bumpy, much like they were. Nothing was _perfect_ , no matter how much he wants to remember it that way. Love was messy and turbulent, and it will continue to be in the future. His memory is not as perfect as he wants to think it is. He fell in love with Donghyuck, fell back out of love, and then convinced himself that they were meant to be together in this universe.

Love is about fights, and it isn’t meant to be easy. That’s what his parents told him, anyways, but it’s been years since he’s seen them. The truth of their words have been lost to change and time and Jaemin’s failing memory. 

All he can remember is Donghyuck, warm summers, and love. The ship stutters for a moment and then continues on its way, between stars and planets and galaxies.

**Earth**

_They are the perfect distance away from the sun. Reaching out, Jaemin is still burnt, anyways._

In their small corner of their yard, Jaemin had started a garden. It was small and was more trouble than it was really worth. He didn’t care, though. Neither of them did. It was a piece of freedom and peace in a world that was continuing to fall apart around them, bit by bit by bit. It is here that Jaemin began to forget. Or, allow himself to forget. It isn’t clear what happened first.

Jaemin was never really sure he understood what a home was, so he tried. He carefully cultivated things that would make them want to stay; worked hard to make this a place they could call their own.

In their yard, a garden, against all odds, flourished. It became Jaemin’s crowning achievement. He never cared about the way Donghyuck looked at it.

For a few years, they live off of scavenged vegetables. Jaemin is small, hands able to fit between tree roots and pull out mushrooms which his father carefully surveys. Sometimes they’re thrown to the side and other times they’re placed in the pocket of his mother’s sweatshirt. When he tells another child this, they look at him like he has a million and one heads.

 _It’s normal_ , Jaemin thinks, _to struggle a little in life_.

He’s ten and there’s nothing more for him to really understand. Donghyuck doesn’t think of it much. Sometimes he even comes along. He gets into trouble for it sometimes, his parents asking him why he was seen running around in the woods instead of at school. Jaemin’s parents tell him that there isn’t much merit in education like that anymore.

Jaemin prefers the forest, anyways. It’s decaying and dying, and Donghyuck tells him that, pretty soon, there won’t be anything left.

“I don’t care,” he says, honest. “That’s how it is.”

Jaemin dreams of a small garden, hidden in the yard of a house that’s falling apart. Nothing ever changes, and every single day things are the exact same. One day he hits his knee, and begins to walk with more hesitation. It’s not long until he settles back into a routine and nothing is wrong anymore. Donghyuck sits in the yard, beneath their only tree, and Jaemin thinks that this is bliss.

Beneath the scent of roses and rhododendron and lavender is the smell of something burning. Buried under the sounds of birds and the television on in their living room is the occasional explosion. They’re always there, though, and nothing changes, so Jaemin ignores it. Donghyuck never says anything about, anyways. Even in these dreams, Jaemin clutches to him in the heat of the summer.

It never really occurs to him that it’s been summer for a thousand and one days.

**Mars**

_There’s a moment where everything is okay, before it all bursts into flames._

The Earth falls apart because of greed. People die because of greed.

People live because of greed, too, though. They’re still alive because of selfishness. They watch the war through distance and electricity and glass. Jaemin doesn’t remember most of this, though. He’s kept them in this house to stay away from the destruction wrought around them because he isn’t ready to let go.

Their yard is small, but open, and in all truth, they’re hiding beneath the tree. In the winter it’s easier to convince themselves that things are normal. Eventually, Jaemin forgets that this is new, that this is wrong, that the world around them is falling apart. The snow piles up to ungodly heights and bodies are lulled into stasis and thrown into the deepest corners of space. Jaemin knows that they’ll be up sometime soon.

Jaemin will close his eyes, and Donghyuck will be beside him both awake and asleep.

This was the Earth’s way of saying goodbye. The coasts crumbled into the ocean and volcanoes put on spectacular shows; killer fireworks with the intention to keep them rooted to their very spot. In the end, the Earth pushed its inhabitants into space and to places that don’t hold the same promises as Earth. And even if Earth’s promises are of death and demise and destruction and an _end_ , the universe can’t help but wonder if a certain end was a wiser choice than hurtling oneself towards _nothing_.

It acted as a home life for long enough. Just like its inhabitants, and the stars in the sky, all good things must come to an end.

**Ceres**

_These are some of those moments forgotten to time._

Donghyuck didn’t want a garden. Jaemin always viewed the world they lived in with rose-tinted glasses. It was as if reality meant nothing. Somewhere along the line, everything began to change, Jaemin’s moods as severe as the weather. Donghyuck wonders if it was to protect him—to protect them. He knows that everything Jaemin did was for him.

Before everything began to end, Jaemin’s mother had held him in her arms, firmly and with so much love he wept, before letting go and disappearing from his side. One day his mother, the next day his father. Change was gradual until the Earth reared its head and screamed as it began to die, honestly this time. At that same moment, space began to call for them. Fingers of stardust would drift down from the sky, riding on moonlight, and wrap around their wrists and ankles, pulling them little by little towards their new destiny.

Donghyuck didn’t understand it. He couldn’t pretend to understand it, not when the man beside him was so hellbent on keeping earth the same for them. The garden was a silent wish for normalcy that Donghyuck let Jaemin have, because he loved him. Donghyuck thinks that he still loves him, probably, but he’s currently drifting through space and all he can remember is the beach and Jeju and his parents, and an inkling that there are siblings he cannot remember.

Sometimes Jaemin is there, sometimes Jaemin is not. There’s no rhyme or reason to Donghyuck’s dreams as they drift through space to a galaxy that they pray will keep them alive.

**Jupiter**

_An eternity is nothing in the sky. You can fall for your entire life and not know._

Space is so wide. That’s all Jaemin can think as he watches the ship sail through the sky. He wonders where they’re headed. Where it’s headed. There are people in that ship, seeking a new life. One day, probably, that will need to be them. For now, though, Jaemin wishes to stay here, in their house under the summer sun.

Soon, though, the snow will start falling again, and they’ll be trapped in this home until the sun returns and the Earth.

When he closes his eyes, he thinks of a giant wooden ship floating among the clouds. Jaemin’s hand reaches out and disturbs the condensation, and the oars propel them forward. There’s a future that Jaemin has secretly wanted for his entire life. They don’t live in a world where he can think like that, though. This isn’t a situation where he can consider being selfish.

For a moment, though, he allows himself to think of a forest and two boys digging up mushrooms in the shade of foliage. Jaemin would do anything to turn back time, to live in a world that isn’t dying before his very eyes. Birds don’t sing as much as they used to. It’s almost time to go.

The first time Donghyuck said I love you, Jaemin felt like his body was falling from the sky. His voice was soft, barely louder than a whisper, and, to this day, Jaemin wonders if he deserved it. Deserves it. The love they share is the forgiving kind, and Jaemin tries to grow it until it blooms. It does, eventually, but only have a lot of care and consideration.

As selfish as he may seem on the surface, Jaemin ignores the sacrifices he’s made. In the end, they’ve left Earth and departed for the stars to find a new place to land. Here in space, directionality exists with respect to their destination. Without one, there is no up or down, nowhere soft to land.

“I love you,” Donghyuck says in his dreams. This time, the sky is dark, and nothing exists beyond the edge of their yard. It fades its darkness, dotted by distant, distant stars.

“I love you,” Jaemin says.

In these dreams, Jaemin can fall and fall and fall. So long as the sky is all around them, he’ll never hit the ground.

**Saturn**

_God, you say? What is a God to a man who can’t see reality?_

If the universe is their home, then what is a God to an ever-expanding entity? Jaemin’s fingers brush through the streams of stardust and paint pictures of a better world, connecting planets with a sweeping gesture. Dreams are endless, and with them Jaemin can create everything he’s ever wanted to.

Crumbling a star between his fingers, he blows on its remains like he’s making wishes.

 _A safe landing_ , he whispers. _We’ll have a safe landing._

**Uranus**

_It’s like slow motion, watching Donghyuck exist in his periphery. They are together, but apart._

Sunsets are beautiful. If Jaemin works hard enough, he can watch them from the edge of the forest. Dirt collects under his nails, and he sits on dry grass, picking it away, as the sun sinks beyond the horizon. When he was young, he thought that the sun, at the end of the day, would rest in the center of the earth. He learns, later, from Donghyuck, that he’s wrong. It’s a nice thought, though.

“I like the idea that the Earth keeps the sun safe at the end of the day when it finally needs to rest more than Earth spinning around itself and the sun,” Donghyuck says one day. He knocks his feet together, and Jaemin huffs. “That makes the Earth seem pretty cool.”

“We live on it,” mutters Jaemin, the sky turning a bright red. It fades into pinks and oranges, blurred by clouds. “It’s cool because of that, too.”

Looking at him, Donghyuck barks out a loud laugh. Jaemin isn’t sure what’s so funny when he’s being serious.

“Yeah, you’re right.”

There are the briefest moments of consciousness that seep into his subconsciousness. They present themselves in his dreams in the forms of stars and planets he can hold in his hands and sharp edges that draw blood and call his name. Humans are born from the remnants of dying and expired stars. There’s something poetic and gentle and morbid to be said about that, but all Jaemin can think is that he’s grateful to be alive, even if the Earth he loves is dying.

The sky cries for it.

The farther they travel, the more Jaemin’s mind comes to understand that thousands of days of summer is abnormal. Snow begins to fall every other day from the surface of the moon. Beneath his feet, he’ll flatten it until it turns into ice before his very eyes. It’s always cloudy, full of impurities and he knows that, if he looks closely enough, there are galaxies in there.

“Do you enjoy these dreams?” asks Donghyuck, staring out the window. The sun is behind the moon, but Donghyuck is bright enough to make up for it.

Jaemin thinks that he enjoys these dreams, but he’s been asleep for so long that he isn’t sure that he knows what reality is anymore. “I think so,” whispers Jaemin. When he pushes his arm forward, it phases through the glass. Snow collects in his palm, but cannot travel through the window like he can. “Oh.”

“I don’t like snow inside, remember?”

Standing straighter, Jaemin presses his palm against Donghyuck’s and thinks that they’re both pretty cold. “Right.”

**Neptune**

_Their world is dying. The tides no longer move with the moon._

One day, they say that the tides no longer change with the moon. It was an early morning, and Jaemin had wrapped his arms around Donghyuck tightly and prayed for a miracle that was never going to come so long as they lived on this Earth. The skies continued to weep, though the tears began to burn, and Jaemin watched their garden die before his very eyes.

This was the moment, probably, that Jaemin realized they had to leave. This Earth and its sky no longer loved them.

They signed up on a day, not that time actually mattered anymore, and they were given numbers, new names, and told that they would travel together. The days between then and their departure were filled with mornings spent gazing at the sky as rockets propelled them into the sky, weaving between galaxies to find somewhere new to go. It’s a roulette, and there’s no guarantee.

There’s no other way.

“We’ll dream for a thousand years, and then you’ll wake up and see the real me,” Donghyuck says with a smile. “It’ll be nice.”

Not yet asleep, Jaemin nods. “I can’t wait to wake up.” 

**Pluto**

_Before they leave, Donghyuck destroys their garden. He pulls the stems apart by hand._

Life, somewhere along the way, began to lose its meaning. Thoughts became endless and without substance, and Donghyuck realized that the passage of time never truly amounted to anything. Not that Donghyuck understood the way that the world was decaying. It was more of a sensation than knowledge. Visual affirmation.

Leaving Earth, when it became their only way out, reawakened Donghyuck’s heart and pulled him back from the brink of death. The promise of a new beginning, should he never look back. In that moment, he had forgotten everything that kept him attached to this dying planet and decided that an uncertain future was better than dying.

Fingers buried in the acidic dirt, Donghyuck uprooted the remnants of what kept them tied to Earth. In the morning, they would take his measurements and scrub the dirt from beneath his nails. Lay his tired body in a pod made of metal and lull him into a sleep that would last him a journey across the universe. Jaemin will be beside him every step of the way, like he always it.

That’s the thing that keeps Donghyuck going; pushes him to keep tearing the dying roots into small pieces and scattering them in the yellow grass. From the window, Jaemin watches. Donghyuck doesn’t care.

Donghyuck dreams of a gardenless yard, a long shore, and sometimes a smile that doesn’t look broken anymore. They’re pleasant enough on their own, though they lack the warmth of his mother’s touch. She holds him close and reminds him that she loves him, but it feels so, so distant.

He hopes to wake up soon.

**Haumea**

_This is a new change, a new beginning, a new opportunity._

Donghyuck’s mother used to love telling him how loud he was as a child. When he was born he was loud, when he was growing he was loud. Donghyuck was loud, but in the sort of way that always let her know he was there. She enjoyed listening to him sing as he ran around the backyard with his siblings.

Right. Siblings.

His mother had loved them with all her love and them some. Donghyuck misses her. Missed her. One day she was gone and Donghyuck had to accept that the changes in the world were unavoidable. Donghyuck realized that, regardless of how deeply he dug his fingers into what he wanted, things will only stay if the universe allowed it to.

Because the universe is godless and they are its inhabitants.

Donghyuck doesn’t have any power. He never has. Every single step of his life was predetermined and out of his control. The only thing that the universe decided to grace him with is Jaemin, so Donghyuck is determined to hold him close and never let go. After all, the universe could always ask for him back. In such a godless world, anything is possible.

In that same vein, though, Donghyuck thinks that a happy ending could happen.

**Makemake**

_What does it mean to be a human in a universe that’s disappearing in front of your very eyes?_

Donghyuck is _cold_. He is so, _so_ cold. Space’s hands hold Donghyuck in their palms, cradling him among stars and planets. Breathing once, twice, three times—

Oxygen burns. It fuels flames. The combustion reaction requires oxygen, and Donghyuck thinks that he might be dying as he awakens, hands pressed against glass, body thrashing. _Landing, landing_ , echoes in the background, but Donghyuck can’t care. He _doesn’t_ care. His body is shaking, craving escape that this small pod cannot offer him. Donghyuck struggles and struggles and struggles, and everything all at once is a never-ending cycle and he wants _air_.

It’s not long before exhaustion settles deep in his bones, lulling him back into sleep. This time, it’s dreamless, and Donghyuck’s lungs adjust to oxygen and no longer start a fire deep in his chest.

This is his rebirth. Donghyuck is a new man in a new place, and the universe welcomes him. His body no longer feels cold and no longer feels foreign. Around his pod, others begin to wake in a flurry of panic, though he sleeps as the ship screams that it’s landing, that it’s landed, that it’s examining the atmosphere, how much time has passed, how far away they are, how many people are waking up—

Too much, too much, and Donghyuck’s mind quiets itself. He waits for Jaemin, instead.

**Eris**

_Here is this moment where Donghyuck first realized that everything was upside down and shifted to the left._

Donghyuck does not know what this planet holds for him and waking up feels like a nightmare. Palms held up towards the universe, he looks to Jaemin, who sits up and blinks wearily at the ceiling. This is it, their new beginning.

The godless universe will look at them however it wants. Uncertainty will not make a fool of them.

**Author's Note:**

> ["On Foot I Had to Cross the Solar System"](https://allpoetry.com/On-Foot-I-Had-to-Cross-the-Solar-System) by Edith Sodergran


End file.
